Earth Just Keeps Looking Better
Although nobody has seen them, astronomers are pretty sure that planets orbit other stars. We have some nice photos, but those are artists' conceptions. High-powered telescopes like the space-based Kepler give some data to work with. (Nobody had seen Pluto until they went out there and looked with New Horizons probe, remember.) Lots of time, effort, and money have been spent on finding a thousand or so exoplanets, with the hope of finding signs of life. People were betting the odds that there just had to be lots of planets out there, and just had to be life on them. Hope they didn't bet the farm. Artist’s concept of an exoplanet discovered by Kepler. Image credit: NASA Scientists are looking for the "just right" combination of planetary size, composition, star type, and other things to consider if a planet could be habitable. More considerations have narrowed the focus , making the chances of finding life out there ( any life, let alone, sentient) even less l...